Julia Kathleen Nancy McKenzie (born 17 February 1941) is an English actress, singer, presenter, and theatre director.

For her role as Miss Adelaide in the 1982 West End revival of Guys and Dolls, she won the first of two Olivier Awards for Best Actress in a Musical.

[5][6] For her role in the 1986 West End production of the Alan Ayckbourn play Woman in Mind, McKenzie won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress.

[8] She continued her association with Sondheim when she starred as Mrs Lovett in the 1993 London revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

[citation needed] In 2007, she was reunited with Anton Rodgers (again as a husband and wife team) in the ITV comedy You Can Choose Your Friends.

Also in 2007, she co-starred with Michael Gambon and Judi Dench in the BBC One costume drama series Cranford, playing Mrs Forrester, a military widow of slender means, very attached to her cow Bessie.

[11] She noted: "It's difficult because Agatha Christie wrote her in two ways ... First, very much what Geraldine McEwan played: a slight, rather Victorian creature.

A sixth series, including adaptations of A Caribbean Mystery, Greenshaw's Folly and Endless Night, began filming in September 2012 and was broadcast in 2013.

[12] On 26 December 2013, McKenzie appeared as the title character in the film adaption of David Walliams' book Gangsta Granny.

She is a radio performer with a long list of credits, including Blithe Spirit, The Country Wife and A Room with a View.

In 2012 she appeared in the short film Happy and Glorious, produced by Lisa Osborne for the BBC and directed by Danny Boyle as part of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Summer Olympics, doubling for Queen Elizabeth II in the scene where Her Majesty boards a helicopter alongside Daniel Craig as James Bond as her escort to the Olympic Stadium.